Naja

Although Naja was intended to pay tribute to the snake and its various symbolic attributions, I can solemnly attest to its chameleon-like capabilities. In certain aspects, Naja’s game of textures evokes the sinuous and slithering body of a snake, while in others, the ever-adapting nature of a chameleon to its surroundings. At first glance, it may seem like a predictable fragrance, but as you wear it, you come to realize that it becomes less definable. Again, Vero drew inspiration from the classics (Caron’s Tabac Blonde) and produced something new and singular, very much ahead of its time. There are many ways to interpret Naja: a honeyed tobacco, a soapy leather, or a powdery floral all seem perfectly viable options. It is all of that, and some more, and one might experience each of these personalities at various times. Wearing it, I seem to pick up the leathery nuances most, while analyzing it on the skin, it presents more of the powdery and floral facets of the linden flower and the honey. It always starts with the melon and linden blossom duet, swiftly supported by one of the key players, the honey. And while Vero has consecrated her love for using honey in other compositions, it is the first time that she relinquishes her beloved passion fruit for an equally vivid melon accord. Here, the juxtaposition of the watery and fresh melon over the leather reminds me of Le Parfum de Therese, except that in Naja, the leather is highly tangible. The melon sits further in the background. The linden flower accord is more prominent, powdery, and sweet with a characteristic lemony zing, and cleverly blends with the note of honey. The other most important player on my skin is the leather accord. It is not mentioned in the note pyramid, and I assume it is more of a facet that results from the pairing of Osmanthus absolute, tobacco, and Vero’s musk cocktail. One other thing I want to emphasize is how different it feels from the usual leather accords I have encountered. It comes across as creamy, unctuous, and soapy. When I say “soapy,” my mind goes to those homemade lard soaps that use only salts and no perfume. They have a very distinctive smell, which is both fatty and salty. Therefore, picture an unctuous, fatty, at times salty leather. Sinuous and slithering, just like a snake. I do not pick up the osmanthus and the tobacco notes individually, but I believe they intermingle to breed this new species of leather. Finally, the honey is equally important. A very naturalistic smell of honey, texturally accurate, slightly animalic, and only moderately sweet. The musks are cleverly used and not as overtly impolite as with other compositions, such as Onda, Rozy, or Rubj. I think Naja is one of those fragrances that will be experienced slightly differently by each individual. I have not yet read two identical impressions from people who have tried or written about it. Moreover, it may present various aspects at different times and to varying degrees, depending on how much one chooses to apply. For Vero, Naja was meant as a tribute to tobacco, and yet I get none of it. For me, it is a unique take on leather, which makes strong use of honey and is pulled out of the mundane, treacly waters by clever use of linden and melon, both of which imbue a fresh, zingy spark to the composition. IG:@memory.of.scents

An oddly "tart" tobacco if ever there was one, but a tobacco nonetheless! Naja opens with a strong, VERY VERY powdery tobacco - a fused accord from the tobacco + linden (lime) flower absolute. This linden note is also present in several other fragrances and is the source of the honey-like note present in Naja. However, as in real life, the linden note is strongly tinged with the scent of live insects - indeed, far from smelling like a snake, Naja's immediate image to me is of iridescent wings, aphid stylets, honeydew dripping stickily onto a fancy car in the summer heat and large, dramatically looping caterpillars. Smelling not unlike a bug-type Zoologist, Naja's opening is sweet, squirming and unctuous. The melon note is largely peripheral, far more restrained than in La Parfum de Therese or Diorella, and lends only a faint aqua-fruit backdrop which impotently fails to restrain the tobacco linden blast. It does, however, "moisten" the entire sensation, bringing the whole perfume away from dried pipe tobacco and more into a psychedelic, dream-like state. The references (in the press release) to hallucinogenic medicines do strongly apply to the scent, as it gives me the sense of smoking some strange herb and feeling dizzy on my back thereafter. Combined, this is what I'd imagine Absolem (the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland) might smell like - honey and dusty wing scales, Shisha tobacco and hypnotic, watery ripples of blue light. It's squarely unisex. As it dries down, Naja firmly chooses to become an oriental rather than a green or a chypre, and evaporates into a subtle, fluted sweetness similar to Diptyque's Volutes. I will need to spend much, MUCH more time with Naja before I can render judgement on how much I like it, but I can smell that its target audience is tobacco fans (which I'm perhaps not) who are looking for something ground-breaking. Though Veros are now very difficult to sample, I'd encourage any tobacco lovers to watch for Naja slithering through the side of their vision. EDIT: Going on a date later this evening and was perusing my perfumes, choosing a few which had potential to wear out. To my shock, Naja wins this time. It has enormously grown on me despite my reticence with tobacco notes - I get more melon when I smell it now and it works exceptionally well to balance the sweetness out. It's ominous, more mysterious and almost dangerous than I'd initially realised, and does very strongly fit the image of looking through half-lidded eyes in the smouldering dark.

"And it is exactly how you don't expect it to be" That's the quote on Luckyscent and the leaflet that accompanies Naja; in a phrase it sums up the culmination of Vero's work and the spirit of Naja that hovers above skin. Forget about her previous releases, as beautiful as they are, forget about Habanita or Tabac Blond that are said to be the inspiration; here, Vero shows us her signature, the perfection of her skills, a gift to her customers and friends that feels like poison and it's cure, like a shaman performing a spell, like being in a trance and completely awake. In olfactory terms, Naja shares a slight resemblance to Rozy, but only slightly, and while completely different from her previous work, Naja has Vero Kern stamped all over. The opening is the most beautiful melon note in perfume history, with maybe Le Parfum de Therese a close second. In Naja, the melon acts like the breath of air that runs through the honeyed linden and tobacco. It is juicy in the most adult way, quenching and appetizing in the same way a slice of the fruit quenches a heated summer body. The osmanthous and linden interplay showing their honeyed/apricot side, and the tobacco adds a much needed dryness, surrounded by a glorious powdery musk. The musk isn’t dirty like Vero has given us before. Here it becomes skin like, with a certain violet/lilac tinge similar in a way to Mona’s Musc. I was hoping for some more leather but unfortunately there isn’t any, at least on my skin. In a way, Naja feels like a cold scent. Imagine sitting around a campfire, there is fresh tobacco everywhere and the leaves are being cured and dried so as to be rolled. A gentle breeze is carrying the heady sweetness of a nearby linden tree, while eating a slice of juicy melon and smelling the violet powder you applied earlier. Naja in a nutshell. I was expecting something different, darker and Naja came as a major surprise. It took me a while to get used to it, but just like the light after the dark and the sun after the night, Naja is a beauty that stands on its own and shows the immense talent Vero has! I couldn’t be more excited on what is to come. Excellent longevity with average sillage, hovering above skin for hours! My winner from what 2017 has brought us this far!

It's taken me seven years to even start to get my head around this brilliant acid-green remake of Habanita. Naja opens with a high-pitched linden that's the truest I've found in any fragrance, but there's so much more to it than that: melon, which I usually dislike, tobacco, old-school powder (again, not usually a fan), barely-sweet honey, and a kind of green glow effect throughout that may well be the osmanthus. Sillage and lasting power are great, and development is slow and surprising, varying markedly depending on wear conditions, and/or what else I'm smelling/tasting at the time. Often the top-mid notes stick around for almost the whole wear, but at other times I get more of the sweet honey and woody tobacco base-notes, especially if I've smelled something straightforwardly floral/clean (e.g. handsoap) and then smelled Naja again. I struggle to say why I find the whole thing so compelling, but I keep coming back to my sample as an elegant, complicated, cunningly oblique masterpiece that has me rethinking what I like/dislike in perfume.

9Naja. Naja isn't a general crowd pleaser.If your searching out Naja- you probably don't run with the general crowd. Its for the perfumistas that enjoy Carons Tabac Blond, Molinard Habanita, Osmanthus in its fruity tones, powder, leather, and linden. It opens with a cantaloupe effervescence, followed about 10 min later the honeyed osmanthus and a powdery leather shades of vintage Habanita edt. It is deep yet bright, it changes and moves. I get a nutty cantaloupe sometimes, then the powdery leather then the tobacco undulates underneath. Every wearing seems to change but the tone of Naja remains the same. If you are looking for a modern Tabac Blond or Habanita.. this one is it. It does hold firm to the quality of vintage past yet feels modern. It will set you back $260 for 50ml but be assured you will not need more than 1-3 sprays.